It's All About The Packing

In most complex systems there is one component that it critical to the rest of the system running correctly. In travel that component is packing. Get somewhere and don't have what you need?

It got left out of packing. Arrive at a wedding and notice your tie has a big crease and wrinkle down the center? It was bad packing. Scratch the crystal of a valuable timepiece? It was thoughtless packing. No matter where you go or what you take, packing can make the difference between a trip and a tragedy. Companies have devised ingenious ways to make us better packers.

Roll As You Go

Not matter how tightly, or neatly, you fold your clothes to go into the suitcase; they are going to have a crease in them because that's the whole point of folding to create creases. An alternative method used by experienced traveler is rolling. By rolling shirts, pants and skirts there are no natural creases to be edge into clothes and removed later. When you arrive, simply snap your clothes out of the cylindrical form and hang.

The waves from the rolling take about an hour to dissipate and your wardrobe is left unwrinkled. To assist travelers with fragile silks and garments like ties and scarves, Travel Tools presents Rolling Tie Cases. These are small plastic cylinders that you can roll a tie or scarf in simply by putting the edge in and twisting. It keeps the article clean, safe and saves space in your luggage. This way you can arrive in style.

Box Your Watch

We are a people of contrast. We pay hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for watches that express our personality, status or interests and then throw them on dressers, leave them on counters and toss them in the bottom of make-up bags or in the back of a suitcase where they can bounce around and scratch the surface.

The better method is to buy a watch box. While most watch boxes you see are heavy wooden stately things that weigh 50 pounds and take up the top of a dresser, there are travel boxes for watches made of leather that will protect your investment and save space in your suitcase. These cases can hold one, two or five watches in individual compartments making sure they don't scratch, break or get lost in your clothes.

Squeeze It In

For some people arriving wrinkled or scratched is not the problem. They may even like the wrinkled I'm-on-vacation look. Their problem is getting everything they need and want into one bag. With airport luggage weights and restrictions more tight than ever, suitcase space is optimum. For these folks there is the compression bag. These plastic bags hold your clothing they have the air sucked out of the bag compressing the clothes into the thinnest space possible.

Brookstone sells a set of 5 air compression bags in one set that don't require a vacuum or seal. The patented bags have an airlock valve that will drain the air out and compress the contents as tight as possible. Brookstone claims it can triple the amount of space in your suitcase.

Be it safety, style or space you are looking for, investing in some tools for packing is surely the way to go.